Wounded Tiger by Peter Oborne

Peter Oborne is a political journalist with a pleasing sideline in cricket books; meaty, important cricket books that fill gaps in cricket scholarship. His biography of Basil D’Oliveira was masterful. He has followed it with Wounded Tiger, a history of cricket in Pakistan.

Has a cricket book ever been based on so much hard journalism? In an era when Pakistan is regarded as a no-go zone for westerners, his pursuit of the facts took him not only to the main centres of Lahore and Karachi, but also to places such as Peshawar, an hour away from the border with Afghanistan, where western visitors are usually war reporters not cricket historians. He records his inability to go to Baluchistan and Kashmir (the most militarised place in the world, we learn) as if it amounted to professional negligence. All in the cause of cricket scholarship.

The collection of primary evidence through interviews was essential because source documentary material on the early days of Pakistan cricket does not exist. I have been reading reviews of the latest work by the pre-eminent Tudor historian John Guy, (my tutor at Bristol University a long time ago). Addressing himself to the last two decades of Elizabeth’s reign, Guy has done what he always does: he has gone back to the primary sources and rebuilt the story. He had more to work on from England four centuries ago than Oborne has on Pakistan cricket a few decades past. Of course, many of the oral accounts are incomplete and contradictory, but Oborne guides us through them skilfully.

His biography of D’Oliveira and its account of cricket under Apartheid dealt with the old canard that cricket and politics should not mix. Like non-white South Africans, Pakistani players might have wished that they had the luxury of choice. Pakistan’s cricket emerged from politics in its rawest form: the turmoil of the partition of India in 1947. Some of the most famous names of the early decades of Pakistan cricket were among the the millions of Muslims forced to flee to the new country, including the five Mohammad brothers, four of whom were to play test cricket. I saw Mushtaq and Sadiq play often enough in county cricket, but had not appreciated how perilous their early lives had been.

Politics sets the game’s parameters today more than ever. The UAE appears to be an indefinite home from home, while relations with India mean that Pakistani cricketers—only Pakistani cricketers—are forbidden to milk the golden goat that is the IPL.

As millions struggled their way north and west in 1947, one Muslim was making the journey in the opposite direction. Fazal Mahmood travelled from Punjab in the north of the emerging country to Poona, “an insanely dangerous journey for a twenty-year-old Muslim male”. He had been selected in the Indian team for the tour of Australia and he was determined to make the training camp, oblivious to the chaos and danger, but eventually had to give in to political inevitability.

Fazal Mahmood is the first of heroes of Pakistan cricket whose stories Oborne tells; Wounded Tiger begins ingeniously with Fazal in the crowd at the Oval, watching as England wins the Ashes in 1953. A year later he was back, bowling Pakistan to series-squaring victory with twelve wickets.

That the young country was playing test cricket at all was remarkable, given that its domestic cricket was sparse and somewhat chaotic. How come it was granted almost immediate test status? Oborne puts it down to a victory against an MCC touring team (missing a few big names) in 1951. India proposed Pakistan and England seconded. Perhaps the inclusion of a seventh test team to fill an empty summer in 1954 appealed to Lord’s.

The safe passage of the Mohammad brothers was as well for Pakistan’s first decades of test cricket. Hanif Mohammad usually batted as if surviving a nuclear winter, the essence of a young nation making its way against the odds. Oborne presents Mushtaq Mohammad as one of Pakistan’s most under-rated and best captains, genially presiding over one of its most successful periods in the 1970s.

By then, most of the Pakistan team were familiar to us on the county circuit. Sarfraz Nawaz bustling in with short, angry steps at Northampton; Imran Khan, filmstar pace at Worcester and Hove; Zaheer Abbas, a double and single hundred in one game at Canterbury in the golden summer of ‘76. Above all, Asif Iqbal, dancing down the pitch to lash it through the covers. (How uncomfortable that the source of Pakistani matchfixing can be traced to Sharjah while Asif was in charge there). That county experience, and Kerry Packer, turned Pakistan’s players into professionals, no longer happy to be amateurs with jobs tied to the game.

Javed Miandad comes out of this account well. He has often been presented in the western press as some sort of upstart street urchin. In fact, his origins were firmly middle-class. Oborne credits him with accepting the captaincy at difficult times then gracefully stepping down for Imran Khan whenever the great man made himself available.

Oborne (who, it might be noted, has usually written for right-wing newspapers) is consistently critical of the attitudes of the English players, administrators and media towards Pakistan. He is scathing about the Idrais Baig incident on the MCC (in modern terms an England A team) tour in 1955, using MCC archives to tell a more complete version of the story than has been available before.

Baig was an umpire whose performance had displeased the MCC players. In Peshawar, Baig was taken from his hotel, bound and gagged, moved across town and then drenched with water. It was serious assault, but was laughed off by the MCC team and management as only a joke, the go-to excuse for bullies through the ages.

Oborne’s assessment of the “finger-wagging” incident at Faisalabad in 1987 is that it was incompetently handled by those in charge on both sides. But he makes a telling comment about Mike Gatting: “It is hard to come to grips with the set of values which led the England captain to take such a strong stand against allegedly poor Pakistani umpiring, yet be relaxed enough about apartheid to take a rebel squad to South Africa”.

The middle part of the book tends towards a series-by-series recitation. There is much good cricket played by many good cricketers—Abdul Qadir’s story is told with particular relish—as well as a good deal of selectorial mercuriality, players falling out, administrators with varying degrees of competence and cricketing knowledge, and a revolving door approach to the captaincy. The clues to how this came about are littered through the book and often come down to politics, cricketing, national and international.

The story of last quarter-century is related in themes and is the best part of the book. There is the glorious story of reverse swing, a new dimension to the game achieved only with immense skill; needless to say, the British press assumed it was those Pakistanis cheating again.  

The chapter on betting and match-fixing is the book’s saddest. It is clear that Pakistan cricket has been cursed (Oborne’s description) by the bookmakers for several decades. He makes an interesting comparison with prohibition in the United States in the 1920s, concluding that a legalised and regulated cricket betting market would be the best way of exercising control. He visited Mohammad Amir while the young bowler was serving his ban for the Lord’s no-balls. Oborne finds him playing tapeball cricket with the other village lads. He rightly presents the brilliant young bowler as a victim who stood little chance of being able to resist the massive pressure he came under from bookmakers and senior players. I am pleased to have seen Mohammad Amir play at the Basin Reserve earlier this year and hope that the cricket fraternity welcomes him when Pakistan’s tour of the UK begins in a couple of weeks.

I had not understood before reading the book how cricket was an urban, middle-class sport in Pakistan, and that its spread to the lower classes and the rural north and west is recent. Pakistan has achieved a broadening of interest in the game that the ECB and ICC aspire to but can’t deliver. One consequence has been the emergence of Afghanistan as a cricketing country: poppies on a battlefield.

Of course, 9/11 changed everything for Pakistan cricket. Home test matches were spasmodic thereafter, and ended indefinitely with the attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in 2009. Out of that and the spot fixing scandal emerges the final hero of the story: Misbah-ul-Haq.

Misbah took over the Test captaincy with his predecessor facing imprisonment, unusually difficult circumstances even when judged by the regicidal standards of that office. What’s more, he was a 36-year-old batsman who had never quite established himself in the test side. Oborne sums up:

The task that he faced was more difficult than any previous Test captain, including Kardar. He had to lead a cricket team in exile, deal with constant charges of corruption and match-fixing, and confront a chaotic administration.

Almost six years later, Misbah is still there having won more tests than any other captain of Pakistan with a victory percentage only fractionally below Wasim Akram’s lead mark, all without playing a single test at home.

Needless to say, some of the most famous names in Pakistan cricket are calling for him to be replaced for the tour of England. At this time, more than any, they were lucky to stumble upon him.

My most serious criticism of this fine book is the statement on page 261 that Wasim Bari was in 1976 “the world’s top wicketkeeper”. Readers would, I think, be disappointed if I did not assert the rights of the Kentish candidate to that title.

Wounded Tiger was Wisden’s Book of the Year in 2015 and deservedly so. We must hope that Peter Oborne will soon shine his torch of journalism and scholarship into another of cricket’s dusty corners.

New Zealand v Pakistan, ODI, Basin Reserve, 25 January 2016

Scorecard

The old joke about New Zealand, favoured by those who can’t think of anything amusing to say, is that when you land here you turn your watch back 20 years. Last Monday at the Basin it was, for once, pleasingly true.

Pakistan were the visitors for the first ODI to played at the Basin Reserve in a decade, and only the second since the Cake Tin opened around the turn of the century. The day was glorious, with Wellington’s perennial gale taking a day off along with many of the capital’s workers, it being the annual provincial public holiday. The idea of a separate holiday for each part of New Zealand should have had its day with the invention of the telephone and the consequent integration of the national economy, but it persists, and under the sun at the Basin we were pleased that it does.

It was one of the more memorable ODIs: New Zealand turned 99 for six into a 70-run victory.

In the sixth over of the morning Martin Guptill off drove Mohammad Irfan for six, the ball kept within the Basin Reserve only by the top of the Don Neely screen at the southern end of the ground. Guptill has been imperious in recent weeks, so 10,000 people sat back and thought “here we go”. Two balls later Guptill hooked Irfan, but, supporting my hypothesis that the Basin pitches are quicker this season, was a little late on the shot and Wahab Riaz took a good catch at long leg.

Latham was caught behind, a thin but definite ripple showing on snicko, but Williamson was in, so there was no need to worry. But, though he is by no means out of form, Williamson has come off the crest of the wave that he surfed throughout 2015, and got an inside edge onto the stumps that would have found the middle a few weeks ago. Two balls later Elliott was bowled through a passable imitation of the nearby Mt Victoria tunnel between bat and pad, which brought in Corey Anderson, 25 overs or so early.

Anderson did a magnificent holding job in the World Cup semi-final last year, but circumspection is not his natural state and he gave the appearance of an elephant trying not to tread on the daisies. He fell caught behind for ten, and Ronchi went the same way next over.

Both men fell to Mohammad Amir, who bowled beautifully. Watching him will be one of the delights of the next decade or so. That he was the subject of taunting from bores on the bank was no surprise, and he will have to learn to live with that sort of thing. It was disappointing to learn that at the T20 a boofhead PA announcer had played cash register sounds when he came on to bowl. NZ Cricket was quick to apologise. As I wrote last week, Amir was a kid bullied into doing wrong and deserves the support of the cricket world. If Salman Butt were to turn up, I’d be happy to join in the booing.

Ninety-nine for six it was, at the crease two players who few of us had heard of at this time last year: Henry Nicholls and Mitch Santner.

Nicholls is a 24-year-old left-hander from Canterbury who has broken into the ODI side this year. He has also had a short spell in the Big Bash (for the Hobart Hyperbole, or possibly the Brisbane Boast, I forget which) so can certainly give it a tonk. He hit seven fours here, the first five of which came when New Zealand were only two down. But when the collapse came he changed his game and became an accumulator. It was impressive and established Nicholls as the leading contender to succeed McCullum at No 5 in the test team. He was dropped by Hafeez at slip at 15, a mistake that cost Pakistan the match.

Nicholls and Santner put on 79 for the seventh wicket in 16 overs. Pakistan skipper Azhar Ali failed the “what would McCullum do?” test early in this partnership when he put spinners on at both ends to get through the ten overs he needed from them, or least that he would need from them if the innings lasted the full 50 overs. Had he invested a few of the overs available to his quick bowlers and told them to attack, he could have brought the innings to an earlier conclusion.

Santner was judicious about shot selection. He came into international cricket without an impressive record at domestic level and has much to learn. But he looks as if he belongs at this level and the selectors are to be praised for picking him on the basis of class and potential. It worked for Daniel Vettori 20 years ago and could have the same result for Santner.

When Nicholls was out for 82 the score was 203 for eight in the 45^th over. Maybe the tail could scratch—let’s be optimistic—another 30 to give New Zealand a modestly decent target to bowl at?

No one foresaw the carnage of the last five overs. Matt Henry and Mitch McClenaghan set about the Pakistan attack like pit bulls. It was cricket remade by Quentin Tarantino. Six sixes and six fours were hit in the last five overs, during which New Zealand added 71 runs. Nos 8, 9 and 10 all passed 30, something that had not been achieved in any of the 3,277 ODIs that were played before this one.

The pace of the pitch helped the ball fly off the bat, but also accounted for McClenaghan who suffered a fractured eye socket when a ball from Anwar Ali penetrated the grille of his helmet. He went down with worrying thump and it was a relief when he walked unassisted from the field a few minutes later.

As it was a special occasion the Basin Reserve authorities had splashed out on replacement lightbulbs for the scoreboard, which was unusually unambiguous as a consequence. But the operators can report to their masters in Pyongyang that, nevertheless, they still advanced their campaign of misinformation by taking a perverse approach to the issue of the names of the Pakistan team. In most cases (though not all, notably when that name is Mohammad), Pakistani cricketers are identified by their first name (eg Hanif, Mushtaq, Zaheer). The video screen respected this convention. But the scoreboard listed Pakistan under their last names, so leaving those unwisely relying on it for information under the impression that it was recording a completely different game from that on the screen next to it.

A target of 281 was about par. New Zealand were without McClenaghan, which meant that all five frontline bowlers would have to bowl ten overs, with only Williamson in reserve. Pakistan started steadily with 33 from the first ten overs.

Grant Elliott had failed with the bat, but he is the Swiss army knife of New Zealand cricket, with something to offer in any circumstance. It was inspired of Williamson to bring him on as early as the seventh over. By the end of the eleventh over he had two wickets.

Mohammad Hafeez and Babar Azam were comfortable enough putting on 81 for the third wicket until the partnership was broken by Williamson, who brought himself on after Babar got after Santner. Hafeez mistimed a drive and was caught by Henry at long on.

Elliott took a third wicket and when Babar fell to Anderson five were down and the required rate was eight-and-a-half an over. Pakistan’s lower order had none of the resilience of New Zealand’s and Boult was able to finish the game with a spell of four for one, which consolidated his position as the No 1 ODI bowler in the world.

It was splendid to have the ODI cricket back at the Basin. In a perfect world, the stands would be rebuilt and the capacity increased to 14,000 or so, plenty for games against most opponents.

For Australia next week, we will be back at the Cake Tin.

New Zealand v Pakistan, T20, The Cake Tin, 22 January 2016

Scorecard

We still haven’t worked out T20 here in New Zealand. I don’t mean in the playing sense. On good days, we are better than most, as shown by the 95-run trouncing of Pakistan at the Cake Tin, following a ten-wicket victory in Hamilton earlier in the week.

What we haven’t got to grips with is the place of T20 in our cricket. Tonight, 70,000 or more will be at the MCG for the final of the Big B(r)ash. The kiwi equivalent, the final of the Super Smash, was played in front of no more than 400 a week before Christmas on a rugby ground in a province that did not make the finals weekend. In marketing terms, touring Jesus Christ Superstar in Syria would be a better proposition.

Clearly, the New Zealand’s T20 should take place over the late December/January holiday season, at the places where people are at that time: Mt Maunganui, Napier, Queenstown and so on. Just as it was until a couple of years ago, in fact. It could feed off the Big Bash in marketing terms and might attract a few county biffers who fancy Christmas in the sun. There could be an auction. Or at least a jumble sale.

This proposal is purely altruistic, obviously. For my own pleasure I would return to the days when the Plunket Shield began on Christmas Day, though that would instigate tricky negotiations here at My Life in Cricket Scorecards Towers.

I take what I can from T20 games, and try to look cheerful. At the Cake Tin on Friday there was plenty to enjoy. Martin Guptill driving is as handsome a sight as contemporary cricket has to offer. As usual, his shots were orthodox, each one chosen to fit the ball delivered. This game confirmed a trend away from the reverse pulls, scoops and other inventions that once seemed about to render the MCC coaching book obsolete. Here, and in such Big Bash as I have seen, the trick shots seem to have reverted to being an occasional variation to the main theme.

As ever, Kane Williamson was everybody’s sensible older brother (his running calls the only hint that he might enjoy a few quiet ones of a Friday night). Corey Anderson’s undefeated 82 from 42 balls was the batting highlight, once he got over an early spell when his timing was out. He took two for 15 in three overs too. Anderson might just be to New Zealand what the New Zealander Stokes is to England: an all-rounder for the next decade.

Adam Milne took three for eight in three overs; he was too quick for them, simple as that. Many of us hope that the selectors will give him a run in a test match on the right surface. Four or five three-over spells in a day is all we would ask. If my observation about the Basin being quicker this year is correct, against Australia in February could be the time, especially with Johnson gone and Starc injured.

Grant Elliott bettered Milne by one run: three for seven. Hard to think that this time last year there was disbelief—scoffing even—at Elliott’s selection for the World Cup. Now he is a national symbol for dependability, a cricketing Volvo estate.

Elliott introduced an element of unorthodoxy to the batting: when facing a free-hit ball he took guard well wide of off stump, inviting the bowler to aim at the stumps. With batsmen now so much more adept at moving around the crease, the time has come to offer the bowlers more leeway, certainly in T20, but possibly in 50-over cricket too. A stumps-wide channel down the legside should be a legitimate operating area for the bowler. Cricket is at its best when bat and ball are in balance.

It was good to see Mohammad Amir back from his five-year ban and custodial sentence for bowling deliberate no-balls for betting purposes. He was still a boy when he was bullied into it, and the punishment (unlike that for Salman Butt) seemed harsh. I hope that the cricket world rallies around him.

If you go to a big T20 match there is no point in railing against the razzmatazz; the music, the lights, the hype are part of the package, and to suggest that it should be different would be to ask that a man carrying a flag precedes a motor car. It is the small things that are the most telling about how far we have come. Here, I was the only spectator I saw with binoculars around his neck, but then I have reached the stage in life where I accept that my role is often to add quaintness to the occasion.

The music was mostly ok, but almost all from the contemporary hit parade. Not until Bridge Over Troubled Water appeared late on could I name that tune. I propose that for the first six overs there should be only two fielders outside the circle and only Beatles and Stones through the speakers.

It was pleasing to see 16,000 or so enjoying themselves, and it is difficult to see a downside to the full grounds in Australia for the Big Bash. But I do worry. How long before the commercial interests start to demand that the best players are available for the biggest crowds and want to make the Melbourne Big Bash Boxing Day game a tradition?